The first morning London session of the week was rather calm, with many currency pairs trading sideways. Loonie and Swissy pairs were on the move, however, with the Loonie showing uniform weakness while the Swissy showed signs of broad-based strength.

Major Events/Reports:

Oil slides – Oil resumed last week’s theme by sliding lower during the morning London session, with U.S. crude oil down by 0.86% to $43.81 per barrel and Brent blend crude oil down by 0.78% to $45.73 per barrel.

Some risk-taking to start the week – Europe seems to be in a risk-friendly mood today, with the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 up by 0.47% to 1,350.47, the blue-chip Euro Stoxx 50 up by 0.70% to 2,992.00, and the DAX up by 0.95% to 10,244.00, while the safe-haven gold drifted 0.49% lower to $1,325.00 per troy ounce.

Market analysts attributed the risk-on mood in Europe to positive events for specific companies, as well as the better-than-expected German IFO readings.

SNB Jordan speaks – SNB President Thomas Jordan’s statements from China were published earlier, and he had a few things to share. To begin with, he and other SNB officials are keeping a close eye on how the Brexit vote will affect Switzerland’s inflation and growth.

But when Jordan was asked if more easing was in the works, he said that there’s currently no pressing need to do more, but he added that the SNB has “the appropriate room to act” and that negative rates “still can go lower if necessary.” Jordan also didn’t miss a beat and used the media coverage to repeat his mantra that: “The franc remains significantly overvalued.”

SNB sight deposits decrease slightly – The SNB issued its weekly press release on monetary policy data during the session, and it showed that the sight deposits of domestic banks that are deposited at the SNB decreased from CHF 434,701 million to CHF 433,376 million for the week ending on July 22, which could mean that the SNB was not in the mood to intervene in the forex market last week.

For the newbies out there, sight deposits of domestic banks form part of the monetary base and are used by the SNB for financing currency purchases (*cough* currency manipulation *cough*).

Major Currency Movers:

CHF – Despite the prevalence of risk appetite, the Swissy easily dominated its forex rivals during today’s morning London session. The Swissy’s strength was not steady throughout the session, though, since the bulk of the Swissy’s gains was due to a broad-based bullish move at the start of the session, which was due either to the decrease in sight deposits or SNB Jordan’s statement that the SNB was not planning additional stimulus at the moment.

After the initial bullish move, the Swissy either traded sideways or began giving back some of its gains. The Swissy was able to hold onto its gains, though, which is why it came out on top (during this session at least).

USD/CHF was down by 23 pips (-0.24%) to 0.9860, CAD/CHF was down by 27 pips (-0.37%) to 0.7487, GBP/CHF was down by 32 pips (-0.25%) to 1.2940

CAD – The Loonie was pretty much on the defensive during the entire duration of the morning London session, very likely because of the slide in oil prices.

USD/CAD was up by 18 pips (+0.14%) to 1.3169, EUR/CAD was up by 40 pips (+0.28%) to 1.4464, AUD/CAD was up by 23 pips (+0.23%) to 0.9860